Great Washington Museums: Spotlight on the National Building Museum
Posted by: Broad Strokes on: May 25, 2012
Great Washington Museums Celebrate Great Women Artists is a NMWA-organized collaborative city-wide project highlighting works by women artists. During 2012, institutions throughout the Washington area are featuring an array of signature works by women artists that have enriched their distinguished collections. This landmark program, in conjunction with NMWA’s 25th anniversary celebration, continues NMWA’s dedication to celebrating women’s achievements in the visual, performing, and literary arts. This excerpt explores one of the National Building Museum’s great works by women on view, Chloethiel Woodard Smith & Associated Architects’ Model for the Proposed Washington Channel Bridge. Visit www.nmwa.org and download the pdf map to begin your journey!
Chloethiel Woodard Smith & Associated Architects, Model, Proposed Washington Channel Bridge, 1966; Plastic, cardboard, paper, wood, and paint; 85 x 41 ½ x 12 in.; National Building Museum, Gift of the American Architectural Foundation, 2009
Chloethiel Woodard Smith’s innovative proposal for the Washington Channel Bridge spanned from the Southwest waterfront to East Potomac Park in Washington, D.C. Lined with shops and restaurants, the bridge carried only pedestrians and shuttle buses. The design was nicknamed the “Ponte Vecchio” after the famous bridge in Florence, Italy. Smith’s proposal failed to generate significant interest among potential tenants or financiers, so the bridge was never built. On display November 19, 2011–May 28, 2012 in the temporary exhibition “Unbuilt Washington.”
Royalists to Romantics: Spotlight on Césarine Henriette Flore Davin
Posted by: Broad Strokes on: May 23, 2012
In Royalists to Romantics: Women Artists from the Louvre, Versailles, and Other French National Collections, 77 works by 35 artists display the talents of French Revolution-era women artists. Their paintings are windows into their careers and the singular challenges of their time. The catalogue that NMWA has published to illustrate Royalists to Romantics includes essays as well as individual artist biographies that give insight into the lives of women artists working in France between 1750 and 1848. This excerpt explores the life of one the show’s featured artists, Césarine Henriette Flore Davin.
Césarine Henriette Flore Davin, Portrait of Askar-Khan, Ambassador from Persia, in 1808, 1808, Oil on canvas, 67 × 52. in. , Musee national des chateaux de Versailles et de Trianon
Césarine Davin enjoyed modest success as a painter of portraits and narrative paintings in both oils and miniatures. Having studied miniature painting with Jean-Baptiste- Jacques Augustin (1759 – 1832) and oil painting with two rival history painters, Joseph-Benoît Suvée (1743 – 1807) and Jacques-Louis David (1748 – 1825), she regularly exhibited in both media at the Louvre Salons from 1798 to 1822.¹ Her work garnered two awards: a second-class medal at the 1804 Salon and a gold medal at the 1814 Salon. The 1814 prize acknowledged her painting of the Death of Malek-Adhel (untraced), which must have been an exotic scene based on the popular 1805 novel Mathilde, ou Mémoires tirés de l’histoire des croisades (Mathilde, or Memoirs from the history of the Crusades) by Sophie Cottin.²
Davin, whose brother held a position in the Finance Ministry under Napoléon, also received some recognition from government authorities. In 1807 she delivered a portrait (Musée national des châteaux de Versailles et de Trianon) of François-Joseph Lefebvre, Marshal of the Empire, which had been commissioned for the Gallery of Marshals at the Palais des Tuileries. In 1825 she was asked to copy a portrait of Louis xviii. The painting included in the current exhibition, the Portrait of Askar Khan, Ambassador from Persia, in 1808 (cat. 34), exhibited at the Salon of 1810, was purchased for the museum at Versailles in 1836.³
Davin seems to have been married for several years by the time of her first exhibition, as her 1798 Salon offerings included Maternal Tenderness, a family portrait depicting the artist with her husband and their children.4 She is known to have been a regular guest at weekly soirees held by Adélaïde-Marie- Castellas Moitte (1747 – 1807), wife of the sculptor and object designer Jean-Guillaume Moitte (1746 – 1810), and to have joined in social events at the home of her teacher David.
Musicians, too, figured among Davin’s acquaintances. Madame Moitte reports seeing the violinist Antonio Bartolomeo Bruni (1751 – 1821) perform at a soirée chez Davin. Several portraits of musicians testify to such connections, including a portrait of Bruni in the Frick Collection, New York. Formerly attributed to David, this work was firmly identified by Georges Wildenstein as one of Davin’s 1804 Salon offerings.5
Like many female artists of the time, Davin supplemented her income by teaching young women. Her school, which opened in 1805, was reportedly still operating in the year of her death some four decades later.
Notes
1. Davin’s biography is based on Nathalie Lemoine Bouchard, Les peintres en miniature actifs en France, 1650 – 1850 (Paris, 2008), p. 181; Amy M. Fine, “Césarine Davin-Mirvault: ‘Portrait of Bruni’ and Other Works by a Student of David,” Women’s Art Journal 4, no. 1 (Spring-Summer 1983), p. 16; Margaret A. Oppenheimer, “Women Artists in Paris, 1791 – 1814” (PhD diss., New York University, 1996), pp. 155 – 57; Mary Vidal, “The ‘Other Atelier’: Jacques-Louis David’s Female Students,” in Women, Art and the Politics of Identity in Eighteenth-Century Europe, ed. Melissa Lee Hyde and Jennifer Milam (Aldershot, 2003), p. 257; and Georges Wildenstein, “Un tableau attribué à David rendu à Mme Davin-Mirvault: ‘Le portrait du violoniste Bruni’ (Frick Collection),” Gazette des beaux-arts, 6th ser., 59 (February 1962), pp. 93 – 98.
2. Émile Bellier de la Chavignerie, Dictionnaire général des artistes de l’école française depuis l’origine des arts du dessin jusqu’à nos jours (1882 – 85; rpr., Paris, 1997), vol. 1, p. 362, reports that the painting is untraced.
3. Claire Constans, Musée national du château de Versailles: Les peintures, introduction by Jean-Pierre Babelon (Paris, 1995), vol. 1, p. 225.
4. Jean-Francois Heim, Claire Béraud, and Philippe Heim, Les salons de peinture de la Révolution française, 1789 – 1799 (Paris, 1989), p. 177.
5. Wildenstein, “Tableau attribué à David.” The painting is illustrated in Fine, “Césarine Davin-Mirvault,” p. 16, fig. 1.
Great Washington Museums Celebrate Great Women Artists: Spotlight on the Hirshhorn
Posted by: Broad Strokes on: May 18, 2012
Great Washington Museums Celebrate Great Women Artists is a NMWA-organized collaborative city-wide project highlighting works by women artists. During 2012, institutions throughout the Washington area are featuring an array of signature works by women artists that have enriched their distinguished collections. This landmark program, in conjunction with NMWA’s 25th anniversary celebration, continues NMWA’s dedication to celebrating women’s achievements in the visual, performing, and literary arts. This excerpt explores one of the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden’s signature works by a woman artist, Agnes Martin’s Garden. Visit www.nmwa.org and download the pdf map to begin your journey!
Agnes Martin, Garden, 1964; Synthetic polymer and colored pencil on linen, 72 ½ x 72 ⅛ in.; Holenia Purchase Fund and Joseph H. Hirshhorn Fund 2001
On view through spring 2012.
Agnes Martin’s abstract paintings evoke quiet contemplation through the simplicity of their geometric order. Although not a practitioner, Martin became interested in Zen Buddhism and Taoist thought in the late 1940s and early 1950s, incorporating ideas about discipline, meditation, and unity into her work. She developed her signature compositions—subtle grids of muted colors on identical 6-x-6-foot canvas mounts—during the 1960s. In Garden, subtle tension is created by the red and green lines of the grille-like pattern. Typical of Martin’s paintings, a precisely rendered linear foreground balances a vast, delicately toned background, producing a harmonious structure and space. On view through spring 2012.
Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden; Independence Ave. & 7th St. SW, Washington DC; Website: http://hirshhorn.si.edu.
NMWA: Great Washington Museums Celebrate Great Women Artists .
Royalists to Romantics: Spotlight on Rose Adélaïde Ducreux
Posted by: Broad Strokes on: May 15, 2012
In Royalists to Romantics: Women Artists from the Louvre, Versailles, and Other French National Collections, 77 works by 35 artists display the talents of French Revolution-era women artists. Their paintings are windows into their careers and the singular challenges of their time. The catalogue that NMWA has published to illustrate Royalists to Romantics includes essays as well as individual artist biographies that give insight into the lives of women artists working in France between 1750 and 1848. This excerpt explores the life of one the show’s featured artists, Rose Adélaïde Ducreux. For additional information, visit nmwa.org, or purchase the catalogue from the Museum Shop online.
Rose Adélaïde Ducreux (1762-1802), Portrait of the Artist, ca. 1799. Oil on canvas. Musée des beaux-arts, Rouen
Rose Adélaïde Ducreux was the eldest of six children in the Parisian household of portraitist Joseph Ducreux (1735 – 1802) and his wife, Philippine Rose Cosse.¹ Having learned to paint in her father’s studio, Ducreux participated in her first exhibition in 1786. That January she sent a self-portrait to one of the biweekly exhibitions organized by the entrepreneur known as Pahin de la Blancherie in his commercial venue, the Salon de la Correspondance. Her father, whose difficult personality had evidently prevented him from winning admission to the Académie royale de peinture et de sculpture, also exhibited occasionally at this alternative space.
Father and daughter made their joint debut at the Louvre Salon in 1791, when Académie membership ceased being a prerequisite for participation. Rose Ducreux displayed two paintings: a portrait of a young woman and a life-size, standing self-portrait, painted in a Neoclassical style, depicting the artist playing a harp, now in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.² She went on to exhibit at the Louvre in 1793, 1795, 1798, and 1799, showing at least a half dozen paintings and studies, most of which remain untraced. The self-portrait in the current exhibition is dated to around 1799 based on its furnishings and fashions: the white, unstructured, néo-grec dress, the mustard-colored cashmere shawl, and the saber-shaped chair legs all point to this period.
In 1801 Ducreux became engaged to François- Jacques Lequoy de Montgiraud (1748 – 1804), a colonial prefect sent by Napoléon to Saint-Domingue (modern-day Haiti) to help restore order on the island, which was in the throes of revolution.³ After crossing the Atlantic, she contracted typhoid fever and died in 1802.
Notes
1. This biography is based on Joseph Baillio, “Une artiste méconnue, Rose Adélaïde Ducreux,” L’oeil 399 (October 1988), pp. 20 – 27; Neil Jeffares, Dictionary of Pastellists before 1800, online edition, updated May 18, 2010, http://www.pastellists.com/Articles/DucreuxR.pdf; and Margaret A. Oppenheimer, “Women Artists in Paris, 1791 – 1814” (PhD diss., New York University, 1996), pp. 171 – 72. On Joseph Ducreux, see Neil Jeffares, “Ducreux, Joseph,” Dictionary of Pastellists before 1800, online edition, updated March 23, 2011, http://www.pastellists.com/Articles/Ducreux.pdf; and Georgette Lyon, Joseph Ducreux, premier peintre de Marie-Antoinette (1735 – 1802): Sa vie, son oeuvre (Paris, 1958).
2. Jean-François Heim, Claire Béraud, and Philippe Heim, Les salons de peinture de la Révolution française, 1789 – 1799 (Paris, 1989), p. 194.
3. On Lequoy de Montgiraud in Saint-Domingue, see Jean-Marcel Champion, “30 Floréal Year x: The Restoration of Slavery by Bonaparte,” in The Abolitions of Slavery: From L. L. F. Sonthonax to Victor Schoelcher, 1793, 1794, 1848, ed. Marcel Dorigny (Paris and Oxford, 2003), p. 231.
Royalists to Romantics: Spotlight on Madeleine Françoise Basseporte
Posted by: Broad Strokes on: May 4, 2012
In Royalists to Romantics: Women Artists from the Louvre, Versailles, and Other French National Collections, 77 works by 35 artists display the talents of French Revolution-era women artists. Their paintings are windows into their careers and the singular challenges of their time. The catalogue that NMWA has published to illustrate Royalists to Romantics includes essays as well as individual artist biographies that give insight into the lives of women artists working in France between 1750 and 1848. This excerpt explores the life of one the show’s featured artists, Madeleine Françoise Basseporte. For additional information, visit www.nmwa.org, or purchase the catalogue from the Museum Shop by calling 877-226-5294.
Madeleine Françoise Basseporte (1701-1780), Pectinidae, Patella, 1747. Red chalk on paper. Bibliothèque centrale du Muséum national d’histoire naturelle, Paris
Although Madeleine Basseporte initially studied with a history painter, she became a botanical illustrator whose work stands at the intersection of art and science.¹ Her first teacher was the painter and engraver Paul-Ponce-Antoine Robert, known as Robert de Sery (1686–1733), who enjoyed the patronage of Cardinal de Rohan, the scion of an influential noble family of Breton origin. Through Robert, Basseporte was able to study the collections of old master paintings housed at Rohan’s hôtel in the Marais district of Paris.² Robert had close relationships with Basseporte and her widowed mother: he placed Basseporte at the head of a drawing school for female students, asked her to produce prints after many of his works, and entrusted both women to assist with the inventory and distribution of his possessions upon his death.
Visitors in the galleries on the Member Preview Day for Royalists to Romantics
Tradition has it that Basseporte, who grew adept at the art of pastel portraiture, chose to pursue flower painting because it promised a steady income that would enable her to support her aging mother. After Robert’s death, Basseporte apprenticed herself to Claude Aubriet (1665–1742), whom she succeeded in 1741 as official painter to the Jardin du roi (the king’s botanical gardens in Paris). This post, which Basseporte held until 1780, obliged her to provide the crown with twelve paintings per year. Most of these are still held at the gardens, renamed the Jardin des plantes during the Revolution and today part of the Museum national d’histoire naturelle. Several of Basseporte’s drawings from the collection of the Jardin des plantes are on view in this exhibition. Basseporte was also called upon to travel to the royal chateaus at Versailles, Compiegne, Fontainebleau, and Bellevue to record the collections of animals and plants that Louis xv and Madame de Pompadour assembled at these properties. In addition, she taught flower painting to the daughters of Louis xv, who maintained life-long interests in both art and botany. She may also have given lessons to other women, including the future académiciennes Marie Therese Vien and Anne Vallayer-Coster, both included in the current exhibition.
During her tenure at the Jardin du roi, Basseporte interacted with many scientific and intellectual luminaries of the era. The influential Swedish botanist Carolus Linnaeus met Basseporte in the 1730s when she was still studying with Aubriet. The French naturalist Georges-Louis Leclerc, comte de Buffon, kept up a decades-long correspondence with the artist. And the philosophe Jean-Jacques Rousseau reportedly exclaimed that “nature gives plants their existence” but “Mademoiselle Basseporte gives them their preservation.”³
Notes
1. The most thorough biography of Basseporte remains “Necrologe,” Revue universelle des arts 13 (1861), pp. 139–47. The present text also draws upon Emile Bellier de la Chavignerie, Dictionnaire général des artistes de l’école française depuis l’origine des arts du dessin jusqu’à nos jours: Architectes, peintres, sculpteurs, graveurs et lithographes (1882–85; rpr., Paris, 1997), vol. 1, p. 50, and Augustin Jal, Dictionnaire critique de biographie et d’histoire: Errata et supplément pour tous les dictionnaires historiques d’après des documents authentiques inédits (Paris, 1867), p. 124.
2. All information concerning Basseporte’s work with Robert de Sery is based on Henri Bourin, Paul-Ponce-Antoine Robert (de Séry) peintre du Cardinal de Rohan (1686–1733) (Paris, 1907).
3. “Necrologe,” p. 142. According to the author, Rousseau famously said “la nature donnait l’existence aux plantes, mais . . . mademoiselle [sic] Basseporte la leur conservait.”
From the Archives: Catharina Baart Biddle
Posted by: Broad Strokes on: May 1, 2012
The Library and Research Center at the National Museum of Women in the Arts recently accepted an archival donation from the estate of artist Catharina Baart Biddle (1912–2005). The wealth of archival material includes correspondence, photographs, newspaper clippings, and many other artifacts that shed light on the life of this notable Washington arts supporter and female painter.
Catharina Baart Biddle (n.d.)
Born in the Netherlands, Biddle came to the U.S. at age 12 and grew up on Long Island. She had been influenced at an early age by famous Dutch artists such as Rembrandt and Van Gogh. Her work reveals their inspiration, featuring great emphasis on light, shadow, and color. After receiving an M.F.A. from The George Washington University, Biddle turned down a job offer from the school and decided to return to Europe. She spent several years traveling and painting, spending time in Greece, North Africa, and France—even learning from Picasso, Dufy, and Matisse.
Eventually missing the freedom of thought afforded by American life, Biddle returned to the U.S. at the start of World War II, where she received her second M.F.A. from American University. She went on to work in the education department at the National Gallery of Art and then taught in Washington, D.C., public schools for more than 20 years. Dedicated to her mission of furthering arts education, Biddle endowed a fund for undergraduates at American University in 2002. In 1973 she married Livingston Biddle, who drafted the legislation creating the National Endowment of the Arts and the National Endowment of the Humanities. While her husband was serving as the third Chairman of the NEA under President Carter, Biddle was an avid NEA volunteer.
NMWA has significant ties to the Biddle family. The Biddles were members of the NMWA Foundation Board. In 2002, Biddles helped endow a gallery at NMWA called the International Gallery. The donation was intended as a tribute to her husband and their passion for the arts.
“But every artist has a special individuality,” she says, “and the artist’s work should be evolving. To do the very best you can at a given moment, and to learn from it, that is the essence of my work.”
—Catharina Baart Biddle
The LRC has begun processing this collection, and it is available for researcher use. The archival material dates throughout the entirety of Biddle’s life, especially her earlier years. Although there is a wide range of material, a majority of the collection consists of photographs and correspondence. There are a number of travel photographs in particular, including many from Poland, as well as letters to loved ones such as her sister, Mary, and Livingston Biddle. The collection provides fascinating insight into the life of this extraordinary woman.
—Eva Richardson is a former Library and Research Center intern at the National Museum of Women in the Arts.
Royalists to Romantics: Spotlight on Adrienne Marie Louise Grandpierre-Deverzy
Posted by: Broad Strokes on: April 24, 2012
In Royalists to Romantics: Women Artists from the Louvre, Versailles, and Other French National Collections, 77 works by 35 artists display the talents of French Revolution-era women artists. Their paintings are windows into their careers and the singular challenges of their time. The catalogue that NMWA has published to illustrate Royalists to Romantics includes essays as well as individual artist biographies that give insight into the lives of women artists working in France between 1750 and 1848. This excerpt explores the life of one the show’s featured artists, Adrienne Marie Louise Grandpierre-Deverzy. For additional information, visit www.nmwa.org, or purchase the catalogue from the Museum Shop by calling 877-226-5294.
Adrienne Marie Louise Grandpierre-Deverzy (1798-1869), The Studio of Abel de Pujol, 1822. Oil on canvas. Musée Marmottan Monet, Paris
A prolific and recognized artist, Grandpierre-Deverzy was a student, a colleague, and, from 1856 until her death, the second wife of the history painter Abel de Pujol (1787–1861).¹ From 1822 to 1855 she exhibited regularly at the Paris Salons, sending portraits, genre scenes, and history paintings. Her narrative paintings generally feature subjects selected from modern European history and literature, and associated with the Troubadour style. Her 1824 Salon offerings included the deceptively titled View of a Portion of the Château of Fontainbleau (untraced), which depicts the seventeenth-century queen Christina of Sweden having Monaldeschi, her equerry, murdered (a subject treated by Félicie de Fauveau, among others), and a scene (untraced) from the picaresque eighteenth-century novel The Adventures of Gil Blas of Santillane.² In 1828 she received a silver medal from the Societe des amis des arts of Cambrai.
Visitors in the galleries on Royalists to Romantics Member Preview Day
Grandpierre-Deverzy was also a committed teacher who gave lessons and assisted Pujol during the separate studio hours that he maintained for female pupils. Her 1822 Studio of Abel de Pujol, displayed at her Salon debut and included in the exhibition, depicts the seated Pujol critiquing a drawing held on his lap while more than a dozen young women, scattered about the space, paint, chat, select pigments, or, at the right, simply gaze out the window.³ Gender-appropriate instructional aids abound, including the clothed female model seated in the left rear corner, copies after three identifiable religious paintings by Pujol, who specialized in that genre, and a shelf of plaster casts with a male nude torso turned decorously, if playfully, toward the wall. Grandpierre-Deverzy reprised the theme of the atelier twice: once at the 1836 Salon, which included the scene of Pujol’s male studio also in the exhibition, and once in 1855. The 1836 painting includes a nude female model who, posing for the male artist at the left, maintains decorum by turning her back to the viewer.⁴
These studio scenes are Grandpierre-Deverzy’s best-known paintings. The 1822 painting became emblematic of the very idea of women’s artistic practice when it served as the cover image for the catalogue of the groundbreaking 1976 exhibition Women Artists, 1550–1950, curated by Ann Sutherland Harris and Linda Nochlin.
Notes
1. All sources consulted for this biography concur that Grandpierre-Deverzy studied with Pujol. These include E. Bénézit, Dictionnaire critique et documentaire des peintres, sculpteurs, dessinateurs, et graveurs de tous les temps et de tous les pays par un groupe d’écrivains spécialistes français et étrangers, new ed. (Paris, 1999), vol. 6, p. 569; Gen Doy, Women and Visual Culture in Nineteenth-Century France, 1800–1852 (London and New York, 1998), pp. 38–39; La femme artiste: D’Élisabeth Vigée-Lebrun à Rosa Bonheur, exh. cat. (Mont-de-Marsan, 1981), pp. 57–59; Charles Gabet, Dictionnaire des artistes de l’école française, au xixe siècle (Paris, 1831), p. 325; and Ann Sutherland Harris and Linda Nochlin, Women Artists, 1550–1950, exh. cat. (New York, 1976), pp. 219–21. However, Elizabeth E. Guffey, Drawing an Elusive Line: The Art of Pierre-Paul Prud’hon (Newark, de, 2001), p. 169, additionally refers to Grandpierre-Deverzy as a “former student of David,” though her name does not appear in the list of David’s female students published in Mary Vidal, “The ‘Other Atelier’: Jacques-Louis David’s Female Students,” in Women, Art and the Politics of Identity, ed. Melissa Lee Hyde and Jennifer Milam (Aldershot, 2003), pp. 257–58.
2. Both of these works are listed as untraced in Émile Bellier de la Chavignerie, Dictionnaire général des artistes de l’école française depuis l’origine des arts du dessin jusqu’à nos jours (1882–85; rpr., Paris, 1997), vol. 1, p. 687.
3. This painting is discussed by the scholars cited above and by Christine Havice, “In a Class by Herself: 19th Century Images of the Woman Artist as Student,” Woman’s Art Journal 2, no. 1 (Spring-Summer 1981), p. 37, and Alexandra K. Wettlaufer, “Dibutades and Her Daughters: The Female Artist in Postrevolutionary France,” Nineteenth-Century Studies 18 (2004), pp. 22–23.
4. See Susan Waller, The Invention of the Model: Artists and Models in Paris, 1830–1870 (Aldershot, 2006), pp. 47–48.
NMWA’s Silver Collection on its Silver Anniversary
Posted by: Broad Strokes on: April 20, 2012
In honor of NMWA’s 25th—silver—anniversary, the museum is presenting a special display of its collection of works by British and Irish women silversmiths, on view March 23–September 23, 2012.
Hester Bateman, George III epergne, 1786; Silver, 20 x 20 x 26 in.; On loan from S.J. Shrubsole; This is the only epergne know by England's most famous female silversmith. It is illustrated and described in "Hester Bateman: Queen of English Silversmiths" by David Shure, PL. XLIII.
The collection represents different women makers, who worked in widely varying styles to create objects from the William & Mary period through the reign of Queen Victoria. The works, made in England and Ireland between 1695 and 1852, express the way in which women lived and worked during that period. Through this array of silver household objects, viewers have a chance to study history, social customs, and design. Except for a magnificent silver epergne by Hester Bateman, on loan from S.J. Shrubsole in New York, all of the works on view are from NMWA’s collection. The collection was originally assembled by Nancy Valentine, a founding member of NMWA and a former chair of the National Advisory Board, with funding from Lorraine and Oliver Grace and family. It has continued to grow over the years to more than 190 pieces.
Isabel Pero, George II cup and cover, 1740; Silver, 12 1/2 in. high; Gift of Lois Grass, Lorraine Grace, and Nancy W. Valentine
This installation, which includes a number of works by women of Huguenot descent, has a special connection to NMWA’s current exhibition Royalists to Romantics: Women Artists from the Louvre, Versailles, and Other French National Collections. In the current issue of Women in the Arts, Nancy Valentine explains why Huguenot women silversmiths are well-represented in NMWA’s collection:
“Huguenots, French Protestant families, fled Catholic persecution in 1685. Among the Huguenots who settled in England were many of the finest silversmiths of their time, trained to please the extravagant excesses of Louis XIV’s court. Their skills and styles continued to influence English silver at the same time the women in Royalists to Romantics painted in France. The English silver on display is marked by women Huguenot silversmiths of French descent including Elizabeth Godfrey, Anne Tanqueray, Magdalen Feline, Louisa Courtauld, and Isabel Pero.”
For more information about NMWA’s silver collection, visit the museum, become a member, or learn more at nmwa.org.
Sister Mary Corita on PBS!
Posted by: Broad Strokes on: April 17, 2012
Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art Kathryn A. Wat was recently interviewed by PBS’s Religion and Ethics Newsweekly. Wat described R(ad)ical Love: Sister Mary Corita, NMWA’s current exhibition of Corita’s 1960s, advertising-image-based art, on view March 9–July 15, 2012.
Kathryn Wat, NMWA curator, leads a tour of R(ad)ical Love
As Wat explains, work by Sister Mary Corita (later Corita Kent, 1918–1986) appeals to today’s viewers because of our constant exposure to media and advertising—we are constantly faced with advertising imagery and aspirational slogans created by companies selling products. Corita used 60s-era advertising words and images to communicate “her intense emotional response to the issues of her time.”
She often juxtaposed imagery from advertisements with texts that spoke to deeper spiritual fulfillment, addressing the cultural turmoil around her. “In the 60s, here in America, you are dealing with the Vietnam War. This is certainly on everyone’s mind, in addition to the Civil Rights movement, which was very close to her heart. She is in the middle of this maelstrom and seeks to make sense of it from her perspective as a nun.”
Sister Mary Corita (later Corita Kent), for eleanor, 1964; Serigraph on Pellon
“I think that the tenor of the 1960s involved a push/pull with religion…. There are works in this exhibition that feature texts from the bible. There are several works that incorporate proverbs. She quotes from many Christian authors. So, the Christian content is in the exhibition. But the way that she turns and twists it by juxtaposing it with secular content and certainly with secular imagery that she has drawn from popular culture is truly unique.”
To watch the video and hear Wat discuss more of Corita’s work—“super-cool art that’s very hip, but that is filled with a sincere spirit”—click here: http://video.pbs.org/video/2210001517/.
Royalists to Romantics: Spotlight on Adélaïde Labille-Guiard
Posted by: Broad Strokes on: April 10, 2012
In Royalists to Romantics: Woman Artists from the Louvre, Versailles, and Other French National Collections, 77 works by 35 artists display the talents of French Revolution-era women artists. Their paintings are windows into their careers and the singular challenges of their time. The catalogue that NMWA has published to illustrate Royalists to Romantics includes essays as well as individual artist biographies that give insight into the lives of women artists working in France between 1750 and 1848. This excerpt explores the life of one the show’s featured artists, Adélaïde Labille-Guiard. For additional information, visit www.nmwa.org, or purchase the catalogue from the Museum Shop by calling 877-226-5294.
Adélaïde Labille-Guiard (1749-1803), Portrait of a Woman, 1787. Oil on canvas. Musée des beaux-arts, Quimper
Portraitist Adélaïde Labille-Guiard was the daughter of a shopkeeper whose boutique, near the Palais-Royal, stocked fashionable fabrics and trimmings.¹ She learned her considerable skills from artists in the neighborhood: she studied miniature painting with François-Élie Vincent (1708–1790), who taught in the Academie de Saint-Luc; she consulted academician Maurice Quentin de La Tour (1704–1788) for advice on pastels; and she learned oils from François-André Vincent, an academician and son of François-Élie. François-André became her second husband in 1800, seven years after she divorced Nicolas Guiard, an administrator in the treasury of the clergy.
Labille-Guiard joined the Académie de Saint-Luc in 1774, and later that year sent a pastel and a miniature to its final show. In 1782 she began exhibiting in Pahin de la Blancherie’s commercial venue, the Salon de la Correspondance. Two pastels in the present exhibition—the portraits of the playwright Jean-François Ducis and the actor known as Brizard—first appeared in Pahin’s rooms. Both were commissioned by the comtesse d’Angiviller, wife of the director of the Batîments du roi, who later helped Labille-Guiard to fend off sexually charged criticism. Six members of the Académie royale also sat for portraits by Labille-Guiard in this period; all six voted for her admission.
Laura Auricchio discussing Adélaïde Labille-Guiard on Member Preview Day
On May 31, 1783, Labille-Guiard and Élisabeth Louise Vigée-LeBrun became the twelfth and thirteenth women ever granted full membership in the Académie royale, bringing the number of female members to its limit of four. Their joint salon debut attracted considerable attention from critics, who found the women’s charms nearly as appealing as their paintings. As Labille-Guiard honed her ability to capture the look and feel of assorted materials and fashions—for instance, in her Portrait of a Woman—she attracted the attention of Mesdames Adélaïde and Victoire, the powerful aunts of Louis XVI, who commissioned several large-scale portraits.
The outbreak of the Revolution in 1789, and Mesdames’ subsequent emigration, left Labille-Guiard in a difficult position. Remaining in France, she joined the faction of academicians seeking to reform, not abolish, the institution, and affiliated with the moderate politicians known as the Feuillants. However, as radical forces gained control, she was required to submit her largest painting—a group portrait featuring the comte de Provence (the king’s brother who became Louis XVIII)—to be burned. She retired to the countryside with Vincent and two students during the Reign of Terror. In 1795 Labille-Guiard returned to Paris and to the Salons, but neither her spirits nor her career ever recovered fully.
Note
1. Labille-Guiard has been the subject of three books: Laura Auricchio, Adélaïde Labille-Guiard: Artist in the Age of Revolution (Los Angeles, 2009); Anne-Marie Passez, Adélaïde Labille-Guiard: Biographie et catalogue raisonné (Paris, 1973); and Roger Portalis, Adélaïde Labille-Guiard, 1749–1803 (Paris, 1902).
